The Gallery: 8pm
It’s not the most exciting of photos, but this was what I could see at 8pm last night.
Any other night, I’d be upstairs overseeing bath-and-bed time but on Tuesdays the older girls go to Brownies, so the smaller two are tucked up in bed by 8pm.
Then I head downstairs and work on my book for a bit. I try and write between 1-2000 words a day and that is most likely to happen between the hours of 8-10pm, as they are child and husband free.
My desk appears to be a mess, but I maintain there is order beneath the chaos. For those of you who don’t believe this, let me give you a tour…
Right at the front, I have my trusty Organised Mum diary sitting open at the relevant week. I’ve been an OM fan since they started printing their diaries and buy one every year without fail. This year I’ve gone for the Family Life Book rather than the bog standard Life Book. It has a column for each person, rather than just one column for all and so far it’s working quite well, I think.
On my Life Book sits what is apparently the only pen in the house. I guard it jealously and no one else is allowed to touch it.
To the right of my Life Book are the lotions and potions that keep my hand eczema under control. If you suffer from this, you will understand why I have several pots of this stuff around the house. For anyone who is interested I’ve found using SLS-free toiletries has helped my eczema enormously, along with copious quantities of Argan Organics Healing touch cream followed by a layer of Simple Derma cream.
Up by the screen I have my Mother’s Day Meerkat and timer that shows the wrong time in in clock mode. The timer mode is very useful and I use it every day, but I have never been able to work out how to correct the time, so usually ignore it. However, it has caught me out on occasion and made me very late.
In front of the Meerkat is my glasses case. I wore glasses for many years as a child but had a very early form of laser treatment in my early 20′s. It’s been fantastic and I’ve had almost 20 glasses-free years, but middle age crept up on me, and I now need glasses for when I’m at the computer. I don’t mind, I don’t need them out of the house or for driving but I do keep taking them off and putting them down somewhere.
The big pile of papers to the left is supposed to be ‘school correspondence’. If I was organised, I’d recycle these letters when I was done with them, but instead I let them build up and take over my desk. They all get dumped when the pile becomes sliding off the desk of its own accord.
Camouflaged in the school letters is the latest brochure from Families Worldwide. I’ve been flicking through this and dreaming about our next adventure, while I work on writing about our last one.
After all, everyone works more efficiently when they have something to look forward to, don’t they?
This post is part of this week’s Gallery over at Sticky Fingers. To see what other people get up to at 8pm, have a look here.
Wow, I have to admire your commitment and discipline with the writing. I’m also writing a book, but there’s no way I get a session in every night!!! I am in awe. Oh, and by the way, that pen thing – I hear ya.
I don’t do to every day or night, but I try to write something. You should do NaNoWriMo this year!
Oh my I wish my kids were still of an age to be tucked up in bed at 8pm… oh the bliss!
Mollyxxx
The older two aren’t always asleep, but I do try and get them upstairs.
Fantastic post. I always work best in organised chaos too.
Thats what I tell myself too…
An Organised Mum Diary?! Is this what I have been missing all my life? I’ve never heard of it, it sounds right up my street…..I need one, now!! So with you on the school paperwork, hate it and yes, I too allow it to build up and up and up, until the pile literally topples over!
Oh yes, try one
http://www.organised-mum.co.uk/ They run from September to the next year’s December, so now is the perfect time to get one.
I won’t pretend it makes me the most organised person in the world BUT I dread to think what I’d be like without one!
They say that a messy desk is a sign of genius, or have I been told that by way of flattery?
Very encouraging to hear that you still get the big two to bed at a reasonable hour. I am not relishing the loss of our evenings and intend to enforce early bedtimes for many a year yet.
I should say I attempt to get them to bed by 8. There is a fair amount of going up and down the stairs….
Oooh what are you writing about? I love to write one of the good things I have rediscovered my love since starting my blog! Great photo, looks like organised chaos!
I’m writing a travel book about dragging the kids around Namibia. It’s going to be a guide for anyone interested in doing the same, but hopefully will be a light, entertaining read for people who think the whole idea sounds like madness, and prefer to read about it instead.
I think I may need an organised mum diary! *searches google*
Hah hah love it! Looks like my desk at work
That looks about what I was doing. x